Which is Good Resolution for 1CD DVD-Rips

[SmartBuddY]

Hi Friends,
I need clear idea for following Specs:

I want to make 1CD(700 MB) movie from a DVD

Run Time: 2 Hrs 30 Mins Movie

Please suggest & answer the doubts here for great quality

which is Good Resolution can be taken for 1CD (700 MB)?
640 or 608 or 592 or 576

which is good container for 1CD (Rips) with low bitrates(540 or 600 KBps)?
X264 or MKV

Thank You

[neuron2]

[bump after forum move and edit]

[Keiyakusha]

Hi Friends,
I need clear idea for following Specs:

I want to make 1CD(700 MB) movie from a DVD

Run Time: 2 Hrs 30 Mins Movie

Please suggest & answer the doubts here for great quality

which is Good Resolution can be taken for 1CD (700 MB)?
640 or 608 or 592 or 576

which is good container for 1CD (Rips) with low bitrates(540 or 600 KBps)?
X264 or MKV

Thank You
x264 is encoder, not a container. Maybe you mean mp4? If so, there is no difference. Of course depending on what audio and subtitles (if any) you want to include.

And resolution... try to encode some samples with same settings and bitrate, suitable to fit whole movie on 1 CD but with different resolutions and choose the one you like more.

[BigDid]

Hi Friends,
...
I want to make 1CD(700 MB) movie from a DVD
...
which is Good Resolution can be taken for 1CD (700 MB)?
640 or 608 or 592 or 576
which is good container for 1CD (Rips) with low bitrates(540 or 600 KBps)?
X264 or MKV

Hi,

You have to get understandings of codecs and containers thingies. Resolution depends of lots of parameters like, as you point out, bitrate but also input Aspect ratio; a 4:3 movie usually compresses less than a 16:9 and needs a lower resolution to get better quality...

If your choice is x264 codec in a mkv container, you may want to try some semi-auto applications like HdconverttoX (Hdctx), Ripbot, Handbrake... Only HdctX has a compression test that will save you some time to choose the good resolution.

If your choice were xvid codec for avi container I would have suggested AutoGK. As a semi-auto app it has a compression test and a few other good things for beginners. I have yet to find the same kind of ease for x264/mkv encoding apps...

Did

Edit: and welcome to the forum!

[Blue_MiSfit]

Hi SmartBuddY!

Welcome to dooom9!

A few things,

1) Ask yourself why you're targeting a 700mb 1CD backup. Optical media is horribly unreliable, and hard drives are SO cheap these days, why not allow some wiggle room! If you can let go of a 700mb size, you can use x264 in "CRF" encoding mode, which basically ensures a constant quality. You simply pick a CRF number (18-22 usually works well), and encode all your movies using this number. The output file size will vary, but it's worth it! Also, using CRF lets you get away with a single pass, instead of two passes. Plus, you can just keep the movie at its native resolution, and not ever resize (this is a good thing!!)

2) A little terminology:

Containers:
AVI, MP4, MKV, MOV

Formats:
MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP, MPEG-4 AVC (H.264)

Codecs:
x264, Xvid, DivX, HC
(I'm sort of cheating on codecs, but this is close enough for government work!)

If you want to go with using x264 (which I STRONGLY suggest), you basically choose between the MP4 and MKV containers. The main difference is pretty simple. Basically, DVDs usually have Dolby Digital (AC3) audio as the main audio track. As far as I know, this can't be stored properly using an MP4 container, but MKV has no problems with it.

If you're dead-set on targeting a low bitrate, then this doesn't matter, as you'll be re-encoding the audio to a low bitrate anyhow (use Nero's HE-AAC encoder for this!) - in which case you can use either MP4 or MKV.

I always prefer to leave things as close to the original as possible, so I just do a very straightforward CRF encode (usually 19-20 for DVDs in my case), then mux the result with the main AC3 or DTS track in an MKV container and call it a day.

As far as encoding software, Handbrake is very easy for newbies. Ripbot264 is also very good and simple. For more advanced stuff, MeGUI is pretty good! There are plenty of alternatives.

Again, welcome! Feel free to ask questions!

~MiSfit

[movmasty]

Hi Friends,
I need clear idea for following Specs:

I want to make 1CD(700 MB) movie from a DVD

Run Time: 2 Hrs 30 Mins Movie

Please suggest & answer the doubts here for great quality

which is Good Resolution can be taken for 1CD (700 MB)?
640 or 608 or 592 or 576

even if I do not have experience with h264, with a 2 Hrs 30 Mins Movie on one CD i would suggest 400xxx

i dont understand very well why in the blue ray era there is still a CD size,
but above all i dont understand why to start with a 2,30h movie...

[Adub]

As for the resolution, I leave mine as close to the original as possible. I crop all black borders, and encode. If necessary, I set an anamorphic flag in MKVMerge, but otherwise, as little resizing as possible.

[ERQ]

It depends on lots of factors like video duration, type of movie (action scenes eats more bitrate or else they have blocky Artifacts), audio format, aspect ratio, bitrate etc.

I will suggest using compressibility test (In Auto GK choose resolution as auto width) and get desired resolution.

Don't stick to 700MB 1 cd plan if compressibility test result is below 50%.

You can also use Megui with x264 video and HE aac audio(2 channel 48kbps NeroHeAAC is good) with mkv or mp4 as container, use the avi synth creator to choose proper resize resolution after auto crop (don't untick mod16), resize/downsize resolution as less as possible with good quality output, then use bitrate calculator to check what bitrate you are getting with 700 MB, then use avs cutter and encode a sample clip of the source Video with target bitrate an see the output quality and choose if it needed more downsizing resolution or audio quality to fit in 700 MB, this will give you good quality results (better than auto gk). Here is a guide for X264 using Megui (http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/MeGUI_H.264_Conversion_Guide_page1.html).

Ask yourself why you're targeting a 700mb 1CD backup. Optical media is horribly unreliable, and hard drives are SO cheap these days

That's true in some sense but cheap HDD are also not good these days, HDD crashes are very common in that case you will certainly lose some files or all. If you buy quality Optical media such as Verbatim-Mitsushi, Taiyo Yuden and take good care in handling Cds/DvDs then Cds/DVDs have archival reliability as HDDs.

By the way If you prefer DVD as backup media then 1GB to 2GB rips with 1000kbps to 1800kbps video bitrate with clever anamorphic encoding (no resize/crop) in MeGui with x264+HeAAC+mkv/mp4 will give you superb results as good as original DVD source.

[Blue_MiSfit]

That's true in some sense but cheap HDD are also not good these days, HDD crashes are very common in that case you will certainly lose some files or all. If you buy quality Optical media such as Verbatim-Mitsushi, Taiyo Yuden and take good care in handling Cds/DvDs then Cds/DVDs have archival reliability as HDDs.


Yes, but what's the cost per GB - considering really good media?

If we're talking CD-R's then you can assume you'll pay about $15-20 for a 50 pack - which equals ~55 cents per gigabyte. HORRIBLE.
DVD5, assume about the same cost - which equals about 8-9 cents per gigabyte. Much better!
1TB or 1.5TB hard drives range in cost between $85 and $140. This comes out to about 8 cents per gigabyte as well.

Ultimately, DVD+Rs and hard drive storage are about the same cost, but I hate swapping discs :) Just me...

~MiSfit

[dat720]

That's true in some sense but cheap HDD are also not good these days, HDD crashes are very common in that case you will certainly lose some files or all.

Not sure where your getting those stats, I work in IT we support about 5000-6000 PC's in our organisation 50% are at least 8 years old 40% are 2-3 years old and the last 10% are under a year old....

Hard drive failures are so rare that its not even talked about, maybe 1 every couple of months! The bigger problem is idiot users and Windows XP shitting itself!

And the majority of our PC's have 20-40gb HDD's 80's in the newer ones and some of the high spec machines get 160gb drives...

I have 250GB drives in use in this PC that are nearly 5 years old and have never shown any issues, infact none of my drives have failed unexpectedly..... unless you count dropping them as unexpected.

And what is cheap HDD???? you can count the amount of manufacturers on one hand... Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Hitachi and Toshiba. Which manufacturer are your so called cheap hdd's?

Fact is Hard drives are the most reliable and most cost effective form of consumer storage...

[ERQ]

@dat720 It may be a little off-topic discussion but I would like to point out that HDD storage and DVDs cannot be compared only by reliability and cost effectiveness, DVDs are removable and can be played on any simple DVD player to Hi-end Computer. Removable HDDs are costly.

And what is cheap HDD????

By cheap I mean the fallen prices of any HDD brand. Almost all of my friends have PC and I took a little survey and found 3 of them had hdd crash issues, one was Samsung (IDE), another 2 was Seagate. Both were under warranty, and replaced by the company. But the Samsung one gave trouble again. Yes you can say thats a single incident and may be you are right because of all that experience you got in IT support. I am just saying I never heard that a good quality DVD-R media have any data loss issues other than damage caused by scratches/physical-damages.

[dat720]

So let me get this right, because manufacturing process have improved and because there are newer technologies pushing down the price of normal platter based disc's this makes them less reliable?
Hard drives are better faster and more reliable than they have ever been.... just don't drop them!

I have drives from most manufacturers, mostly Western Digital, a few Seagate's and a couple of Samsung's, and they are all 100% reliable, the newest drive would be the WD 1tb Green Power which is near on 2 years old and has so far served faultlessly.

And when you use the word crash I assume you mean fail? Crash is a term used when a program quits unexpectedly, hard drives don't crash they fail!

[Blue_MiSfit]

Hard drives are for the most part extremely reliable.

Yes they do crash, but on the whole I'd consider them much more reliable and cost-effective than any optical media.

Besides - we're all just making backups of original content anyway - so what's the worst that can happen? You have to re-encode your stuff a few years down the line with the latest and greatest video compression magic? Not such a bad thing ;)

I look back on the old sub 480p Xvid rips I used to do and shake my head with disgust as I re-encode them to CRF19 x264 :D

~MiSfit